Emphasized

How to spell emphasized

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce emphasized

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does emphasized mean?

1. verbGave special importance or prominence to something, in speech or writing.

Emphasized in a sentence

• The manager emphasized the deadline during the morning meeting.

• She emphasized each key figure by printing it in bold.

Where does emphasized come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek emphasis, which originally described an appearance or a showing forth, built from the prefix en- meaning 'in' and the verb phainein meaning 'to show' or 'to make visible'. In ancient rhetoric, emphasis referred to a hidden or implied meaning that showed through a speaker's words, a sense quite different from the modern stress on importance. The noun passed through Latin emphasis and into English in the late 1500s, after which the verb 'emphasize' was formed by adding the productive -ize ending, which itself comes from the Greek -izein verb suffix. The past-tense 'emphasized' simply adds -ed. The spelling trap lies in the middle: the unstressed schwa in the second syllable hides whether you write 'pha', and the 's' that sounds like a 'z' tempts some writers, even though the root keeps the 's' from phainein.

How the word is built

• em- (variant of Greek en-: in, into)
• phas (from phainein: to show, to appear)
• -ize (verb-forming suffix)
• -ed (past tense)

British and American spelling

Emphasized is the American spelling. British English spells it emphasised.